As the train jolted along, Ted made a reluctant trip to the cramped bathroom, remembering the artist’s teasing about his germophobia and their domestic life together, including a joke about burning a filthy bedspread. Returning, he tried to avoid conversation, but Louisa began asking about Easter and eggs, segueing into Fish’s quirks and her own childhood misunderstandings. When Louisa noticed Ted’s limp and pressed, Ted first deflected but then admitted he had been stabbed while intervening in a fight between students at his school.

Louisa asked if he had nearly died; Ted downplayed it but conceded he lost a lot of blood and never stopped being afraid afterward. She connected this to his move in with the artist. Ted explained that after the hospital he was too frightened to return to teaching, so he accepted the artist’s longstanding invitation to live with him. In the artist’s home, Ted slept through the night for the first time in years, but as months passed the artist became ill, and Ted stayed. Ted described the difference between being loved by many and receiving love, revealing the artist was adored by millions yet lonely at his enormous table of sixteen chairs.

They discussed sleep; Ted admitted he still could not sleep through the night, and Louisa related that she slept best hearing Fish’s breathing. Ted clarified they sold the artist’s apartment and belongings to buy back the painting, calling it the artist’s entire inheritance for Louisa. When Louisa protested she knew nothing about art, Ted pointed out she had safeguarded the postcard of the painting through many foster homes, proving her devotion; the artist had loved her cockroach art and saw himself in her.

Louisa shared an auction insult where a rich woman called her a cockroach; she embraced the metaphor as survival. Ted joked she was now a rich person because of the painting, and Louisa quipped that made her a camper, not homeless. He almost said the artist gave her the painting because she was the real inheritance, but held back. Louisa invited questions, and when Ted asked about Fish’s nickname, Louisa described reclaiming mockery by choosing “Fish” over “Hammerhead Shark,” and how Fish called her “the Giant.”

Ted gently asked about Louisa’s parents. She said her father left before she was born and later died in a bar fight, and her mother, not evil but broken, left Louisa with neighbors at age five and disappeared; the neighbors were later imprisoned for theft. A social worker told Louisa her history when she was around seven. Louisa added that her mother drank herself to death. Ted apologized and they sat with the weight of her story, close yet not touching.

When a conductor passed, Louisa teased Ted about his type. After blushing denials and banter, Ted confessed he only falls in love with geniuses, which made Louisa think of Fish. Ted said that was why Fish loved Louisa, correcting her assumption about romantic patterns and offering what she felt was the kindest thing an adult had said to her. Discussing an epitaph, Ted rejected the artist’s silly suggestion and revealed he planned: “I love you and I believe in you,” a phrase they used to share.

At Louisa’s urging, Ted began to tell the true story of the painting. He corrected her identification of the three figures on the pier, stating the third was Ali, not the artist, and that everyone is wrong about the painting: they are not three boys. He then prepared to tell the whole story from the beginning.